


Miscellany

by optimouse



Series: Maroon and Gold [4]
Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Diary/Journal, F/M, Gen, Letters, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2020-10-13 04:01:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20576111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/optimouse/pseuds/optimouse
Summary: Letters, journal entries, tax records, etc. from the Stronghold Archives and Vaults.Supporting canon, pre-canon, (potentially) post-canon. Perhaps some AU materials.





	1. Letter to Aral

Cousin,

We have had many arguments over the years, disagreements, yet I still remember playing together in the depths of the Stronghold.

I do think that the heart of my personal issues with you were your relationships with Ges Vorrutyer and his cohorts. I will not tell my daughter, but the man’s friends slept with my wife, which I would have excused save that he attempted, and probably succeeded at drawing her loyalties from the family.

You remember her playing with us? She was capricious in her affections, even then. I remember that our grandparents were concerned about her emotional and ethical development—which was echoed when she returned to her mother’s family in the Tribes. The rumors that I tracked down—well, I divorced her for her idiocy with Ges and Prince Serg. She was involved in at least one of the attempts on Emperor Ezar’s life, not that I could prove it. The official reason, and a very strong reason that I gave to others for our divorce and my keeping my daughter were that she had financial indiscretions. Honestly, she does, and so does my brother.

Aral, I worry. Burya has barely recovered from the Cetagandans. Their Occupation was not kind, and our infrastructure suffered. I have bolstered it, we are thriving—for now. For my people, I must remain strong, to enable that my heirs prosper. That my people grow in strength. Prince Serg worries me. Reminds me too much of our history, of Yuri. From the spies that my men have found, I suspect that the man will move against me, and probably you and your family as well.

You will never receive this letter, unless my daughter finds it one day. I am sending her into hiding—armsmen and her governess with her. That woman scares me. I’ve seen her skills with a nerve disruptor, a knife, a rifle. I hired her for her skills in teaching, but her ability to protect my daughter was a welcome surprise.

Yours,

Vidal


	2. One Emperor, Many Empires Excerpt 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> excerpt from introduction

** One Emperor, Many Empires **

**By Yan Darian**

_The Emperor is a longstanding heritage on Barrayar, however, their power over every district has not always held true. While there are documented cases of uprisings, etc., the simpler truth is that the Empire did not come to all of the lands of Barrayar at the same time, or under the same situations. While we now have one Emperor, we simply do not have one, homogeneous Empire._

_After colonization, several disparate ethnic and language groups scattered, forming their own communities, and eventually their own leadership. For example, the modern Vordarian district (traditionally Burya) has two main types of communities; the village & city folk, and a nomadic group of people that are called the Tribes and are semi-autonomous. Their traditions go that their ruling leadership started from a group that battled the previous leadership and took the seat of ruling power for themselves, thereby linking the Tribes and the warlords of Burya. According to my research (see end of chapter for works referenced), those warlords maintained and expanded the lands that became Vordarian district._

_Nearby Vorpolis district…_


	3. letter from Vidal Vordarian, as published in X, with commentary by Professora Vordere, and annotation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> another supporting, possibly AU for the series letter.

_My dearest daughter—Sofia._

_I wish to gift you the world. Emperor Ezar has allowed me to name you my heir, and he worries that I would change my mind if I sired a boy. Perhaps I would, but only if they were showing more skill than you have already. My grandparents taught me that to raise an heir, one provided many different games to all of one’s children, and that the child that succeeded at the games of leadership, to support those for your family’s future._

_You are our family’s future. I doubt that you will have a brother—my brother had not had any children so far, and he is not being careful. Your mother is of the blood, which had meant to me that even if we had not managed a child together, I would have ensured that a child of her own be born. It’s not the first time an infertile Count has claimed an heir that wasn’t his, but was of his blood. Thankfully, we managed._

_The Emperor Ezar is a strong man, and his choice of the Princess Kareen was flawless-the young Prince Gregor is a tribute to both of them. When the Prince Serg ascends to the camp stool, things will become very rough—which is why, for the moment, you will be going into hiding._

_In the case that I do not survive that, the armsmen seconded to you have strict orders to help you assert your eventual Countship of the District. This includes ensure that you take possession of it, whom will support you, etc. Those you stay will help you grow, my little love._

_With love,_

_Your Father_

**Historian’s Notes:**

**Examination of contemporary data released by the Barrayaran Imperial Archives note that Vidal Vordarian’s concerns were not baseless. Prince Serg of House Vorbarra was known to be paranoid of potential threats to the legitimacy of his claim to the camp stool. House Vordarian was a potential claimant to the camp stool through the older full sister of Prince Xav and the Empress Ksenia, wife of Ezar Vorbarra, himself a descendant of a secondary line of the Vorbarras. **

**It would not be the first time in Barrayaran or Earth history than an extant royal line took the throne. Contemporary data released from the Buryan Archives (House Vordarian, Vordarian District, Barrayar) suggest that while Vidal Vordarian was amassing a powerbase prior to Escobar and the death of Prince Serg, it was in the form of trade alliances.**

**Vidal Vordarian’s private papers, of which this letter is a released document, indicate that the man was well aware of the potential for friction between himself and the Prince, including the man’s personal distaste and anxiety of the Prince. No currently released documents indicate whether or not Vidal Vordarian planned to press his claim for the camp stool, though some biographers of the man who later became the head of the Pretendership, believe that he would have, independently, if Prince Serg had survived Escobar.**

** Brother, have you read the rest of these notes? Professora Vordere is of a dry read, but her neutrality on this is excellent! Her snipes at that ass who wrote that popular biography about Great-Grandfather; _House Vordarian & Stealing the Camp Stool; the Story of Count Vidal Vordarian_, made my afternoon. Yes, I’m writing in a book—makes it more interesting for you, doesn’t it? I’m still not sure what Grandmother is thinking, not suing the authors of that nonsense. **

** _ _ **

** _ Sis, if you ever reread this, I’m pretty sure that our Grandmother-the-Count is thinking that she could either sue the crap out of those authors, which would raise their sales through the free PR, or allow relatively free access to the Buryan Archives to historians and scholars & publicize the heck out of it. The district gets money from those historians and scholars needing place to stay, food to eat, etc. Grandpapa snickers every time he has to approve the visas; Great-Grandpa Boris told him that tourism wouldn’t take in Burya, especially not academic tourism.  _ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is actually the first that I wrote of these. I am about halfway through a full chapter in Alliances.  
Headcanon for this particular letter is that it was found in a locked box on Vidal Vordarian's desk in story-canon.  
In one alternate canon, Sofia finds it as a teen, after her father is killed by Emperor Serg and her Uncle Vincent has taken  
the District by his dictate. (Thank you Lanna_Michaels for encouraging me to have alternative universes in my head)
> 
> The commentary is written perhaps 40-60 years in the future


	4. Foreword: Count Sofia Vordarian; Traitor's Child & Stateswoman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> miscellaneous work to bring in the new year, may it be better that the last

Count Sofia Vordarian; Traitor’s Child & Stateswoman

_Foreword_

_The Count Vordarian has reigned for the majority of her rule as Count from a hoverchair or from horseback. She is known for breaking Vorloupoulous’ law in the theory but not in the word, for proving that Count’s Choice must be tempered with merit, and for establishing the first truly galactic-level university on Barrayar. She has brokered alliances, made enemies, and forged the future of the Barrayaran high-aristocracy through strategy and steel._

_She is also my grandmother._

_When I was asked to write this foreword, I was a bit dumbfounded. The Count Vordarian, as my grandmother has been addressed throughout my lifetime, has seemed like an everlasting pillar, a monument to the honor of the generation that raised her and then the one who turned and taught those that followed her that honor and the duty that was inscribed inside her very bones._

_As Count, my grandmother put her hands between the Emperor Gregor I’s hands and swore to him before returning home to Burya and kneeling to her people. She rode to meet the Tribes and there took the oath of steel. She also brought the legal status of women within Burya to the planetary stage, enforcing equal inheritance and custody rights by reminding the Empire that though we are sixty Districts, multiple colonies, and held territories, within the District, the Count’s word is the law and their District’s citizens subject to it—the first in recent memory that District law has been brought to the Empire-Wide court systems._

_She was also the first Count within recent memory to fight the custom of marrying within the Vor-caste without marrying an outworlder. My grandfather took the title Count-Consort upon their marriage, at least to the greater Empire<strike>; there is no non-gendered title for a Count’s spouse still, though in Burya we do have one as there is a non-gendered word for a leader. King is the translation of leader into Standard Galactic and Standard Barrayaran. Tsar</strike>. _

_She body-birthed all of her children, against the direction of her doctor, who whole heartedly recommended that she use a uterine replicator. In fact, she gave birth to her first born with witnesses <strike>due to dynastic tensions at the time, and immediately proclaimed that the child was her Heir</strike>. This indignity was normally saved for Imperial births and had fallen out of favor, something that she told me as a child was to contain all possibility of line theft._

_There is a famous photograph of my grandmother walking the Pilgrimage to the Stronghold from our family shrine in Burya, in the garments of one of the Tsars of Burya. Her hair is resplendent, and she looks <strike>very frail and fragile </strike>like the strength of the district. At that point, she was already the Count Vordarian. The man I knew as Grandpapa, Orel Ghazi, was holding the sword that is shown in her hand in the painting photographed for the front cover. That same sword is the same one that she used when she swore the oath of steel, and the one that she swore with when she knelt to Burya. That sword was the sword of her great-great-grandmother, the woman I grew up calling Lady Protector. The sword was used by the Empress-Consort Sofia, the second wife of Emperor Dorca, to defend the Princess Ksenia, would later become the Empress-Consort Ksenia, wife of Emperor Ezar. My grandmother used it to defend Burya, to dispense justice, and to cut wheat. Her oath is to protect, give justice & law, and to provide food and shelter._

**I win! I didn’t write this one, I wrote the foreword though. Still one of the better pieces of research on Grandmother. What do you think of the foreword so far?**

** Needs work! You danced around some things, though. I see that this draft of the book itself doesn’t mention that photo of Vincent Vordarian’s head on the external wall of the Stronghold. Why? **

**Providence! No original copies remain. Author doesn’t want to publish that or any of the information about that without any proof.**

** Proof? If I get to it first, I’ll publish Grandmother’s journals about the whole thing. Do you think that you could talk the ImpSec Archives into releasing their copies about the negotiations about the whole thing? **

**Is water wet, you twat? I bet I can. I also think that we should have it ready on both sides after Grandmother has been dead for a few years. No need to give the Arch-Conservatives ammunition.**

** True. Too true.  **


End file.
